


Payments Deferred

by pendrecarc



Category: The Lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay
Genre: Bittersweet, Fade to Black, Infidelity, Multi, The slightest suggestion of bloodplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22688548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendrecarc/pseuds/pendrecarc
Summary: In a stolen moment on the winter expedition, Jehane asks Ammar and Rodrigo to lay aside their oaths and burdens for one night.
Relationships: Rodrigo Belmonte/Jehane bet Ishak/Ammar ibn Khairan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Payments Deferred

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Syksy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syksy/gifts).



As an early winter’s dusk fell over the eastern ridge of the Emin ha’Nazar, Jehane bet Ishak exchanged her blood-soaked robe for a fresh one and stepped outside her tent. This was at the very center of their camp, near the makeshift infirmary and well within the protective circle of guards, horses, and sleeping men. The two moons were already high in the sky. She looked a moment into the fading light where Jad’s sun had lately departed, then back toward the east, where the stars had begun to appear in the deepest shadows of blue.

Beside her tent stood two others. She looked between these as well. The first was grey-blue canvas, very plain but for the figure of an eagle on the side. It was dark and quiet. The second had been brilliant scarlet by day and now was turning to a wine-deep purple. Through the fabric she could see shapes cast by a lantern and hear a pair of men’s voices inside.

From the fires all about the camp came the sound of singing and laughter. The infirmary tent was quiet, even her amputation patient fast asleep. Rarely had she been so tired or so satisfied with the work of her hands. Never before had she wanted to share that particular exhaustion and satisfaction with anyone but her own family.

She went to the red tent and pulled back the door.

They sat there together, Ammar and Rodrigo: Ammar shirtless and crosslegged on a rough cushion, Rodrigo crouched beside him fully dressed with a wine flask in his hand. Ammar looked up first, eyes strangely dark in the lantern light. “Have a care, doctor—I’m not dressed for company as refined as yours.”

“I’ve seen everything the body has to offer,” she said lightly, claiming a cushion for her own. “And I’ve long since learned how to look on a man’s nakedness and be unmoved.”

“If that’s true, it is the pity of the world.” His reply came with the quick flash of teeth, but there was something exhausted in his voice. Unlike Jehane’s, his exhaustion was not born of contentment in a difficult, worthy job done well. Instead it came of bitterness, and she knew he had found his day’s work neither worthy nor well done.

Rodrigo moved to greet her, lowering the hand he'd raised to Ammar’s shoulder, and she saw for the first time what he had hidden from sight: a long narrow gash starting at Ammar’s collarbone, ending between the fourth and fifth ribs. It was neither deep nor dangerous and did not seem to be bleeding any longer, but still she let out a low exclamation and bent nearer. “Have you been walking around with this since the battle? You ought to have come to me hours ago.”

“I told him you would say so,” said Rodrigo. In his voice, at least, there was only amusement. “But you had more urgent matters in hand, and we both know how to wash a wound.”

“We need not test how well you can close one. Hold still, both of you.” She carried the simplest tools of her trade in a small pouch hung from the sash at her waist. Weary as she was, poor as the light had become, it was a moment’s work to thread the needle. Then she moved close and began to stitch.

She had spoken only truth when she said she knew how to do this and remain unmoved. The habitual motion, the everyday passage of needle through flesh, allowed her to keep her countenance as she put her hands on that bare skin for the first time. It was hot under her fingertips, and Rodrigo another source of warmth just beside her. She could smell the wine that had cleansed the wound. She could also smell, from both of them, the particular mix of smoke and horse and male sweat that was ever-present in a camp, and under these the scent of Ammar’s perfume. This last was so much fainter than the rest that she couldn't tell if, in his vanity, he had applied it that morning before battle, only for it to fade throughout the day, or if traces from regular use hung on the pillows and clothing scattered about the small tent.

Jehane put these things from her mind to focus on the needle. Ammar’s body was stiff, not against the touch of her hands or the pull of the thread but against something he carried within him. 

Rodrigo leaned suddenly forward. Jehane would have scolded him for brushing her arm, but before she could draw breath he was whispering in Ammar’s ear: “My stallion, come!” Her hands stilled. “Let me ride you to Paradise!”

Ammar’s shoulders began to shake. Jehane bit her lip against a smile, then against a giggle, as he let out a full-throated laugh. She sat back in resignation to wait for him to regain his composure. “I am a woman!” he wheezed, wiping his eyes. “Before I am—”

“—a queen!” Rodrigo pressed his shoulder into Ammar’s uninjured side, all the while grinning slyly at Jehane. “If I’d known you had such a performance in you, my lady, I’d have found an excuse to plumb your depths long before now.”

“My depths,” she said, as regally as she could while seated on the floor of a small tent beside two men who were no better than children, “are as much a mystery to you as ever, Rodrigo Belmonte. Now will you both sit quiet and let me do my work?”

Some minutes later that work was done, though it had been accompanied not by quiet but by poorly-stifled chuckles. As she cut the thread, Jehane let the stern professional mask dissolve, looking not with determination but with tenderness on that torn skin. She pressed her fingers just below it, where a fresh trickle of blood had started.

When she dropped her hand she found it caught, and held, and for an instant was uncertain which of them had taken it. Then Rodrigo lifted it to kiss the red-streaked whorls at her fingertips. And again, open-mouthed, he kissed the inner folds of her palm.

He froze there a long moment. Jehane could not quite tell if he had meant to do it. She knew only that she could not have moved to save her own soul.

Ibn Khairan broke the silence, of course; had the man ever been deprived of speech? “I would offer to leave you both in privacy,” he said, “only I feel compelled to remind you this is _my_ tent.”

“Don’t be a fool," said Jehane. She laid her free hand on his arm.

Gone was the stiffness. Now he shuddered under her touch, only a slight movement, but obvious to one who had been hoping for it. “If that is what you wish,” he said, very low, “I have no objections. If that is what you both wish.”

Rodrigo’s startled grey eyes had calmed. Now they narrowed at the corners to smile in place of his lips, which were still hidden in her palm. “Have I any choice in the matter?”

“It had better be yours,” Jehane said with a clarity she did not feel. “Neither of us is married, you know.”

She thought she might have ended it before they could even begin, and by the quick dart of Ammar’s gaze she knew he thought the same. But Rodrigo inhaled sharply, decisively. “If this one can put aside his guilt for the night,” he said, inclining his head in Ammar’s direction, “I will undertake to do the same, though I may pay for it before long.”

“Then we must make it worth the price.” Jehane did not say that they might yet pay for the guilt Ammar ibn Khairan carried; that the whole peninsula might yet pay for it, and for what the gold they had won today would buy tomorrow. But that was for the morning. Tonight she meant them to think only of a joy long-delayed, and to exhaust them in the pursuit of another kind of satisfaction. She reached for Rodrigo’s belt, still cupping his face in her other hand, as her heart began to beat like the thunder of hooves in the valley. “Ammar, help me show him.”


End file.
